Kempe Foundation

The DadADvantage

Engaging Fathers and Changing Lives for Children

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WHAT WE DO

Overwhelmingly, developmental research suggests that kids benefit when they are engaged with, cared-for by and supported by healthy fathers. The Kempe Center has two main programs under the Fatherhood Initiative: Education for new fathers and male caregivers around Not-Shaking-the-Baby, and The DadAdvantage - affecting children through system change in child welfare and other child and family serving systems.

Our Team seeks to ensure that healthy fathers are more deeply engaged in the lives of their children – and especially those in the child welfare system and other child and family serving agencies. Children are negatively impacted on nearly every social issue: poverty, health, incarceration, criminal activity, teen pregnancy, child abuse, drug and alcohol abuse, childhood obesity and education. The degree to which fathers are involved with their children has also become more complex and variable. Many voices (e.g., legislators, child welfare administrators, legal experts, child development experts, father engagement specialists) joined with us to create a chorus of advocates calling loudly for nationwide, systematic and cultural change that will result in greater involvement of fathers in the lives of their children.

The consequences of growing up in father absent homes to 24 million (33%) of our nation’s children is considered an epidemic not seen in this country before. The first priority starts with nothing short of a society-wide paradigm shift that acknowledges that Dads and paternal family members matter to children to set the course toward a more healthy future.

WHO WE SERVE

The Kempe Center’s fatherhood initiative combines research, policy, training and practice innovation to make change happen in systems serving these children and families. Kempe has a range of strategies and solutions available to affect father engagement within social systems, health care, and ultimately in the individualized and responsive care of their children. Our team’s extensive work to date has yielded knowledge and techniques that improve child welfare policies and practices as they relate to fathers. We transformed that knowledge into cutting-edge consultation and training programs that provide a blueprint for many organizations to further healthy children by developing father-inclusive practices.

Explore more about our initiative by navigating through the links in the right hand side above.